Friday, May 7, 2010

Cousin Sam, Head Cashier

Sam Kisberg, the stuff of small family legend, was a cousin of my great-grandmother Katie Littwin (nee Kisberg).

In his middle age, he lived with Great-grandma Katie in her big boarding house on Ocean Parkway. My mom describes his room as so tiny, overlooking the railroad tracks, furnished with nothing but a bed, a dresser, and a little bookshelf. It smelled of soap; she says he was the cleanest person she ever met. Sometimes she would peek in his drawers just to marvel at how perfectly folded and glowing white his undershirts were.

Sam was the the head cashier at the famous NYC institution, Keen's Steakhouse:

Every Thursday, he came for dinner at my Grandma Eva's, bringing treats from the Steakhouse as a hospitality offering. The Steakhouse staff was allowed to leave work each evening with the best leftovers from that night's dinner seating. Sam would arrive at grandma's house with single portions of cherry cheesecake and brownies. Mom tells me the cake slices would often have a single bite off their pointy ends. Grandpa Max found this shocking, disgusting, and would rail against Sam for his gauche beggarly habits. But Grandma Eva would always whisk the cheesecake into the kitchen and cut off the offending bitten end, whispering to mom "shhh...don't tell daddy..."

Sam brought the dessert on Keen's china, blue and white sturdy Willow-ware plates. The family took to calling this china "Samware," and as a child I would often venture into the little attic room that housed the dishes no longer in frequent rotation, and stare at the hundreds of little Samware dessert plates, neatly stacked in the glassed cupboards...for nothing was ever thrown away in Grandma's house...

He brought, too, from time to time, the white ceramic smoking pipes for which Keen's was famous. Symbols of manly opulence just out of reach, for Sam himself, that soapy-clean Russian immigrant in the tiny room overlooking the train tracks, was a servant, an onlooker, possibly envious, possibly wistful. I'm certain he would have liked to join the ruddy crowds of men in their loud, laughing, drunken steak dinners.

Instead, he made his quiet livelihood behind the cash register, consoling himself with the ill-gotten souvenirs of half-eaten cake and plates and pipes...

I had drinks at Keen's just last week! Sitting next to me was writer and Microsoft doppelganger/schlub John Hodgmen.

A classic old world bar attached to a beautiful restaurant. It doesn't look any different today than it did when Cousin Sam was working there. It's a piece of olde New York and a good place to take your out of town friends. In addition to the steak, they have great lamb and pork chops.

So you think all the things he brought home were ill-gotten gains? If not, his employer was very generous to the staff. Food, china, pipes, not bad at all. Not many employers these days would be that generous.

I like the way he kept himself so clean despite his spartan accommodation. Or maybe because of.

What an interesting story! Sam sounds like a lovely man. I can just see him; sweet-smelling, gleaming skin, sneaking his bitten cheesecake into the house. I love the fact that the willow became Samware.

I love reading these stories.Who's to say Sam wasn't part of that crowd.Even if he wasn't in t he middle of the group he was surely part of it and brought it home with him after to share with the rest.